


Dealing with Differences

by Starrie_Wolf



Series: Playing with Pendulums [2]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Child soldier Kisuke, Don't copy to another site, M/M, The meaning of friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-03 15:04:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17286296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starrie_Wolf/pseuds/Starrie_Wolf
Summary: Urahara Kisuke has got to be the only married man who gets waved over by his own husband at the entrance of an eatery during dinnertime and thinks Ichigo has some work-related reason for it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> #totally winning on the word count and fic quantity fronts

Yadōmaru Lisa, Ichigo reflects, is an inexorable gossip.

That part isn’t new. Having grown up in the same household as Kaien – whom everybody and the Soul King already knows is being wooed by Ukitake-taichō to be his lieutenant – Kyōraku’s lieutenant Lisa is hardly a stranger to any Shiba.

No, what’s new is that for once, the subject of that gossip is _him_.

“Does he call you _Lieutenant Shiba_ in bed too?” She waggles her eyebrows, leaving no room for misunderstanding what she meant.

Ichigo sighs and prays to the Soul King for patience.

She isn’t the only one at the table pretending not to be hanging onto his answer. It’s the first Friday night of the month, which meant it’s not just him and a couple of lieutenants at the izakaya, but also most of the younger captains. Whatever Ichigo says here would reach half of Seireitei by morning.

“No,” he answers curtly, because any attempt at evasion would be taken as an admission.

It’s not like he can admit to half the Gotei that he’s never taken Kisuke to bed in the three months since they’ve been married, after all. Ichigo may not care too much about the Shiba-Shihōin alliance, but he does care about Kisuke, and _Kisuke_ holds that alliance to be of the utmost importance.

* * *

Ichigo supposes that the fault for tonight’s mess lies entirely with him.

For as long as anyone can remember, the _Dancing Fan_ has held a standing reservation for a private room on the first Friday night of every month, from dinnertime until closing. Implicitly, every Gotei captain and lieutenant is invited.

In practice, though, Ichigo rather thinks everyone would faint if Yamamoto or worse, _Kuchiki Ginrei_ steps through the door.

No, the ones who adhere to this custom are the younger ones, like Captains Shinji, Rose, Love and Kensei, as well as Lieutenants Lisa, Hiyori, Mashiro and Ichigo. Captains Ukitake and Kyōraku have been known to make the occasional appearance, as do Lieutenants Yamada and Iba. In fact, the only person Ichigo would like never to see again is Captain Kiganjō – the bill for all those broken tables had been astronomical.

There’s also another, lesser-invoked custom: one could invite their significant other, if one chooses to. In practice, though, the kind of classified conversations that frequently happened behind closed doors meant that the only significant others that ever get invited are the ones who already qualify for the standing invitation anyway.

But it’s that custom that made Ichigo call out instinctively when he spots bright blond hair coming down the street, right before he’s about to enter. Kisuke has the clearance level of at least a lieutenant – probably even higher than that of a Gotei captain’s, in fact, if he’s the effective second-in-charge of the _Stealth Corps_ , who answer to none but Central Forty-Six themselves.

Ichigo should’ve known better than to extend an invitation like that without warning.

Kisuke’s footsteps had barely faltered before he was changing direction, drawing up next to Ichigo with his usual politely puzzled look. “Good evening, Lieutenant Shiba,” he said in a normal voice, which of course meant that everyone still lingering outside the izakaya heard him perfectly. “How may this one be of assistance?”

Ichigo had barely had time to realise he had possibly made a mistake when Kisuke’s eyes swept subtly over the assorted motley – Hirako, pretending to browse the menu even though he could probably have ordered with his eyes closed; Kensei, debating sake options with Mashiro; Lisa, leaning far too close with a gleam in her eyes – and he flicked his fingers in the signs for _mission_ , _danger_?

Ichigo signed the _NO_ so hard he slammed his fist into his thigh, making Hirako look up from the menu.

Kisuke’s brow furrowed slightly, like he couldn’t comprehend why else two captains and three lieutenants have gathered outside an eatery at dinnertime.

Ichigo wanted to sigh. Urahara Kisuke has got to be the only married man who gets waved over by his own husband at the entrance of an eatery during dinnertime and thinks Ichigo has some work-related reason for it.

“Will you join us for dinner?” he asked aloud instead. For good measure, he signed _safe_ and _ally_.

Kisuke looked indecisive, eyes darting up and down the street like he was actually _worried_ that someone might catch him contemplating the concept of sustenance. Then he checked the sky, and Ichigo already knew with a sinking feeling what his answer was going to be before Kisuke said it out loud.

“My most sincere apologies, but this one has a prior appointment to get to.”

At least he didn’t tack on another _Lieutenant Shiba_ to that sentence.

Ignoring the four pairs of eyes on him, Ichigo nodded cordially at Kisuke, watched until his husband vanished in the crowd, and then stepped into the izakaya with his head held high.

* * *

It’s been at least two hours since then, and none of his friends have been able to let him forget it yet.

Ichigo resists the urge to punch somebody, glancing out at the darkening sky. Here he is, enjoying good food and questionable company, while his husband is probably still cooped up in that tiny cellar he calls an office, toiling away at paperwork that isn’t even his own.

The sake curdles in his stomach at the thought.

On impulse, he presses the bell for the waitress and orders a bento to go.

When she leaves, the entire table is staring at him.

“Going to head to bed early tonight?” Lisa is grinning yet again.

“To the Second, actually,” Ichigo tells her curtly, and immediately knows it’s the wrong thing to say.

Lisa raises her eyebrows, touching her lips as though scandalised. “In his _office_! Ichigo, I never knew you had it in you!”

The tenuous hold Ichigo’s been keeping on his temper all night finally snaps. “Because my husband probably hasn’t eaten a single thing in the past ten hours and if he’s got a meeting at seven in the evening, he’s probably going to have to pull an all-nighter just to get through all the work they’ve been piling on him?”

He winces, but he can’t take any of that back. None of it is untrue, but Kisuke doesn’t need to have his secrets carelessly shared like that.

“You’re serious,” Hirako finally breaks the silence. He’s no longer smiling.

“Of course,” Ichigo grits out, and flees the scene with his bento in tow before he can make it worse.

Just before the door slides shut, he hears Lisa shouting, “Bring him along next time!”

* * *

The walk to the Second does give him time to cool down, to rearrange his face such that Kisuke will not immediately think Ichigo is angry with _him_.

No, if anything, Ichigo is angry with _himself_.

As predicted, the light in Kisuke’s tiny alcove is still on, bright yellow visible where the rest of the division is dark and cold. Ichigo quickens his footsteps, loosening the hold on his reiatsu to make sure he doesn’t startle Kisuke.

It’s… not good if anyone startles Kisuke.

“I brought you dinner,” he says rather lamely, before Kisuke can ask him why he’s there.

“Thank you,” Kisuke says. Now that they’re in private he’s deliberately slipped into informality, Ichigo notes, even though he doesn’t like it, just because Ichigo had asked him to, and for a moment Ichigo loves him so much his heart _aches_.

Instead, he says, “Eat before it gets cold.”

Kisuke obediently moves a tottering stack of paperwork aside, snapping his chopsticks apart. Ichigo perches himself on the edge of the desk, watching him.

“Are you free the first Friday evening of next month?”

Kisuke blinks at him, a piece of beef halfway to his mouth. “As far as I am aware of?”

That’s about as much as Ichigo can hope for, given the Stealth Corp’s penchant for changing Kisuke’s work schedule at the last moment. “Will you come for dinner with us?”

“A… Gotei meeting?” Kisuke hazards a guess.

“No,” Ichigo corrects gently. “Just some friends getting dinner and drinks together.”

Belatedly, he realises that there may be a problem in that explanation: does Kisuke know what friends are?

His brow isn’t as deeply furrowed as if he’s trying to analyse a foreign concept, though, which gives Ichigo another idea. Lisa had said specifically to invite Kisuke, even though he’s neither a lieutenant nor a captain. Perhaps the others would also acquiesce to extend the invitation to Kisuke’s friends for a night, even if it’s unusual.

“Do you have any friends you can invite?”

“Friends, I – yes.” Kisuke still looks lost, but he’s responding coherently, and Ichigo refuses to treat him like he’s fragile just because he struggles with concepts other people take for granted. “Will Yoruichi-san and Tessai-san suffice?”

Yoruichi? Shihōin Yoruichi, the captain of the Second – well, she certainly fits the criteria for a standing invitation. But this Tessai-san… the name is familiar, but Ichigo can’t put a face to it.

It takes him an embarrassingly long time to translate ‘Tessai-san’ into ‘Tsukabishi Tessai, Grand Commander of the Kidō Corps and the most accomplished kidō master Seireitei has seen in this millennium’.

Well, he’s fairly certain they’re granted invitations of their own right, no exceptions necessary.

“Sure, we can invite them too, what do you say?”

Kisuke is eyeing him warily, but he nods easily enough.


	2. Chapter 2

Maybe he isn’t coming.

Ichigo resists the urge to fidget or to check the sky for the time, keeping his body language relaxed. It’s hard, when Captain Yoruichi and Commander Tsukabishi are both sitting across him, eyeing him none-too-subtly.

It’s true, Ichigo _did_ deliver their invitations himself, but he really hasn’t expected them both to turn up – especially not Tsukabishi. He’s never even met the man, and, judging by the discreet looks the rest of the table is sending them, nor have most of them.

Kisuke does keep the most interesting company. When Ichigo had suggested he invite his friends, he was thinking of a couple of senior seated officers in the Second, maybe a Stealth Corps officer or two – not the captain of his division and a man so reclusive he may as well be a living legend.

“Do you know where Kisuke is?”

Ichigo’s sister-in-law shrugs, twirling her chopsticks. “Haven’t seen him since morning,” she admits casually, apparently more interested in her sashimi than the conversation. It’s only Ichigo’s habit of parsing Kisuke’s body language instead of his words these few months that lets him read the slight hint of unease Yoruichi is displaying.

Interestingly, he notices that Tsukabishi tenses too.

“So how did you meet Kisuke?” Ichigo would definitely have remembered if he had attended their wedding, which means Tsukabishi is not a Shihōin. That leaves very little avenue for him to know apparently both Kisuke and Yoruichi well enough that Kisuke would count him as one of his two friends.

“Both Shihōin-dono and Urahara-dono have been most kind to me throughout the years,” Tsukabishi demurs, which explains absolutely nothing at all. Ichigo will have to ask Kisuke in private later – if he even turns up at all.

The door to the private room slides open, cutting through the idle chatter. Kisuke ducks into the room, looking terribly confused for a moment with everyone’s attention on him, and for a moment Ichigo thinks he may actually retreat out of the door.

Then that moment passes, and he bows respectfully to the assembled shinigami. “My apologies for my tardiness, captains and lieutenants.”

There’s a murmur of polite protests, and Ichigo pats the seat next to his own. It’s perhaps a little too obvious, but Kisuke’s eyes are darting from face to face like he’s assessing a threat, the beginnings of panic burgeoning in his eyes.

Kisuke slides into the seat next to his, the panic ebbing away, and nods at Yoruichi and Tessai. “My gratitude for your invitation, Lieutenant Shiba.”

Before Ichigo can think of an appropriate response to that, Yoruichi is already filling his cup with tea and waving away his horrified stutters that this act is beneath her station. “So how did the mission go?” she asks, as though unconcerned, though Ichigo can see that she is gripping the teapot handle so tightly her fingers are white.

Kisuke darts a furtive glance at the rest of the table, but he has apparently decided that a direct question from his commander overrides Stealth Corps protocol. “All escapees apprehended, Your Excellency.”

Yoruichi nods, as if that is exactly what she expected to hear. “At ease, operative.”

As though that was a signal, some of the tension melts from Kisuke’s shoulders. He doesn’t look down at the menu in front of him, though, his hands folded neatly in his lap and eyes focused politely on the wall. Ichigo has certainly never seen him do this at home – but Ichigo has also never taken him to a restaurant before, an oversight that he will be correcting as soon as tomorrow –

Yoruichi takes one of the many full bowls piled at her side and thunks it down in front of him. “Eat,” she orders.

Ichigo has been wondering, actually, why she ordered twenty bowls of rice with various toppings and how she plans to finish them all – but so far, she has eaten her way through twelve of them with no sign of slowing down, and so he thought it’s normal for her. Perhaps her metabolism is just faster than the usual shinigami, or she expended most of her reiatsu earlier in the day for whatever reason?

Kisuke digs in without a word, the speed of his chopsticks so fast they are a blur to even Ichigo’s eyes.

There’s the slightest hint of a smile on Yoruichi’s face as she proceeds to demolish her fourteenth bowl of the evening at the same speed. The two of them finish at the same time, and then Yoruichi calmly removes both empty bowls – ignoring Kisuke’s protests as though she can’t hear him – and slams a fresh bowl down in front of him.

“Eat.”

Ichigo realises that he’s so engrossed in watching them that he’s actually forgotten all about his own dinner. Belatedly, he takes a few bites of his own food, and tries very hard to ignore the fact that the entire table is watching Kisuke and Yoruichi eat like they haven’t seen food for _weeks_.

Damn, has Ichigo been accidentally starving him?

It doesn’t escape Ichigo’s notice that even Tsukabishi is on his sixth portion, nor that Kisuke is now obediently working his way through his third bowl in the span of time it takes Ichigo to finish a quarter of his own.

Maybe it’s a Shihōin thing, or a Stealth Corps thing. Ichigo doesn’t know, and at this point, he wants to _shake_ someone for answers – someone who’ll take it better than Kisuke.

Kisuke lays his chopsticks down after his third bowl at a pace too fast to be marked off as casual, as though he’s worried that Yoruichi may try to force a fourth bowl upon him. Ichigo can’t even say he’s _wrong_ , given the gimlet gleam in her eye, but she turns her attention to her own food instead and Kisuke’s shoulders droop a fraction in relief.

Ichigo wants to put an arm around him, but it hasn’t escaped his notice that Kisuke has never touched him outside of their weekly spars and that massage on the first night – as hot as it had been for Ichigo, looking back, it’s like a bucket of cold water to the head to realise that Kisuke might not have enjoyed it at all. He doesn’t know why Kisuke is touch-averse, and he doesn’t want to send the wrong message in public.

One mistake is enough.

“Congratulations on your nuptials, Urahara-dono,” Tsukabishi says. He’s said the same thing to Ichigo when he first arrived, but what really strikes Ichigo is the fact that he addresses Kisuke by last name and rank, even though he’s known Kisuke for… how long again?

“It’s Shiba now,” Kisuke corrects softly.

Inexplicably, they’re now both looking at Ichigo, as though awaiting his pronouncement on the matter. “Uh,” Ichigo says awkwardly. “Just… use whatever name you’re comfortable with.”

There’s an unmistakeably approving glint in Tsukabishi’s eyes, and he feels like he’s just passed a test of some sort. Ichigo doesn’t understand, and thinks that maybe he doesn’t _want_ to understand why something as basic as _choosing a preferred name_ is such a big deal for Kisuke.

Tsukabishi is engaging Kisuke in some kind of discussion involving reiatsu modulation that flies completely over Ichigo’s head, even though he’s nominally from a family of kidō experts. Sword-fighting has always been more of his thing anyway, and his clan hasn’t pushed like the Kuchiki or even the Shihōin would have.

Speaking of pushing…

His eyes meet Yoruichi’s across the table. Kisuke had said, back then, that Yoruichi was the one who pushed him into this arranged marriage to make him happy. That’s practically the opposite of why Ichigo had forced his own way into the arrangement, he thinks sardonically. Yuzu had been so distraught by the idea of having to leave her family and live with the Shihōins – since Suì-Fēng is Yoruichi’s personal bodyguard and certainly cannot move out – that Ichigo strong-armed the clan elders into re-negotiating the marriage for himself instead.

He’d been expecting the Shihōin to continue fielding Suì-Fēng, since it is after all the Shiba’s fault – _his_ fault – that the marriage must be re-negotiated mere days before the wedding. He certainly hasn’t expected them to take one look at his lieutenant status and offer up someone who’s a Third Seat and a main line Shihōin by blood if not by name.

Yoruichi returns his gaze placidly. There’s a small smile playing about her lips.

Ichigo glances at Kisuke, who’s now looking far more animated than Ichigo has ever seen him, engrossed in a debate with Tsukabishi about… either some kind of experimental kidō they are developing or the same topic as before, not that Ichigo can tell.

Ichigo must remember to invite Tsukabishi over more often.

Feeling bold all of a sudden, Ichigo inches his hand closer to where Kisuke’s is lying on the table. Kisuke’s eyes flick to it, as he expects, and then back to his conversation.

It’s as much of an invitation as Ichigo is ever going to get.

He slips his hand into Kisuke’s, careful to keep the motion slow and unthreatening, just loosely wrapping his own fingers around Kisuke’s and giving plenty of room for Kisuke to pull away. Kisuke doesn’t so much as flinch, and Ichigo congratulates himself on a job well done.

He almost jumps when Kisuke tugs their joined hands off the table and onto his thigh in a motion so smooth it looks natural, and Ichigo is so bewildered by the sudden display of intimacy that he nearly misses it when Kisuke picks his teacup up with his free hand and uses it to conceal the way his fingers curl into the sign for _wait_.

Wait? For what?

Under the table, Kisuke frees his hand from Ichigo’s loose grip, flicking his wrist in a practised motion. Ichigo can’t even muster up a groan when, moments later, a knife is discreetly slipped into his palm.

He… that’s not what –

 _Thank you_ , Ichigo signs, at a complete loss of what to do. There’s no convenient hand-sign for ‘please take your knife back’. Maybe he could stab someone? Stab _himself_?

Yoruichi bursts out laughing.

It’s so loud that it catches _everybody_ ’s attention, halting individual conversations all around the room.

“Thanks for the invite!” she tells the assorted crowd brightly, which neatly draws any attention away from where Kisuke is sitting like he wants to sink into the floor. “We should definitely do this again, and I’ll sponsor a few barrels from our private stock the next round!”

Over the sudden clamour of excitement and the shout for a toast, Yoruichi catches Ichigo’s eye.

 _Thank you_ , she signs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [cywscross's UraIchi Discord server](https://discordapp.com/invite/ADFnKTZ#_=_) | [Starrie's fic sneak preview server](https://discord.gg/8yJVmbD)


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